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What's Your Carbon Footprint?
Posted at 08:52 AM on January 07, 2008 comments (0)
By Valerie Denny, iVillage.com
According to the iVillage Carbon Calculator, which measures your individual impact on the environment, I'm at a 6.4 - slightly lower than the national average of 9.96.
I owe my lower-than-average carbon footprint, in part, to my former teacher, Mr. Krick. No, he didn't teach me to recycle or to reduce my waste. As my driver's ed teacher, Mr. Krick instilled in me a fear of my driving abilities - which, incidentally, has served the planet quite well. I've always hated driving, and that was one of the reasons why New York City appealed to me - I would be able to walk or take the subway everywhere. So I moved into an eco-friendly (read: tiny) Manhattan apartment with two other girls and now walk to work every day. Living in an astronomically high-rent apartment is motivation enough for my roommates and me to keep our other bills to a minimum, and that means using as little energy as possible. ("It's only 95 degrees out. We don't need AC. Don't be such a baby!") In fact, one of the added benefits of the green movement is that practices otherwise seen as tightwad or stingy, such as refusing to turn on the AC, reusing sandwich bags and letting the laundry pile up, are actually revered as eco-friendly.
Let other people call us cheapskates; I prefer "environmentalists."
Valerie Denny
iVillage, Associate Producer
http://www.ivillage.com
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